What a website actually costs in 2026
How much does a website cost in 2026? Real price bands, what is inside an estimate, the running costs nobody mentions, and the questions to ask.
How much does a website cost in 2026? The range for a small business runs from a dollar to about fifteen thousand, and both ends of that are real prices for real work. A freelancer building five pages usually lands between $1,000 and $5,000. A small agency lands between $5,000 and $15,000. On a managed service, which is what we run, the shape of the price is different: Today you pay $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting. After that hosting is $8.99 a month, billed on the same date each month until you cancel, and you can cancel in any month.
The number that catches people out is the running cost. A site quoted at $2,400 with no monthly figure attached often turns into $45 a month once the domain, the mailbox, the hosting, the SSL certificate and the page builder license are all invoiced separately by four companies. Get the ongoing cost in writing before you compare anything, from every supplier who will be sending you an invoice, because the build price on its own isn’t what you end up paying.
How much does a website cost: the real price bands#
| Who builds it | Typical build cost | Typical monthly | Who writes the words |
|---|---|---|---|
| You, on a DIY builder | $0 | $9 to $32 | You |
| A relative or a student | $200 to $600 | Unclear, often forgotten | You |
| Freelancer | $1,000 to $5,000 | $5 to $25, if offered | Usually you |
| Small agency | $5,000 to $15,000 | $50 to $250 | Them, if you paid for it |
| Managed service (ours) | $1 | Hosting, billed monthly | Us |
Those bands come from the people who sell the work. WebFX, which is an agency, published a 2026 range of $1,000 to $30,000 and said most businesses spend $501 to $5,000 a year. Website Builder Expert, which earns a commission from the builders it lists, put a designer at $1,000 to $5,000 upfront and hourly rates at $50 to $200. Elementor, which sells a page builder, put a freelancer at $2,000 to $8,000 and an agency at $10,000 to $35,000. Jabz Web Design publishes a floor of $1,000 and up for a custom build. All read on September 3, 2026.
Our own row carries a word instead of a figure in the monthly column. The same build is openly sold at $1,500, which is what a US agency charges for a small business site of this size. The website itself is settled business at $1, but the site still has to sit on a machine that’s awake at three in the morning, and that costs money every month whoever built it. What we bill after the dollar is hosting, not the website, and it’s one bill instead of four. The number itself is on the hosting page.
Something else is missing from that table. Nobody quotes for the delay. An estimate of $3,200 with a ten week lead time and two rounds of revisions means a contractor who wanted the site for the spring gets it in July. If you’re seasonal, the cost of a slow build is larger than the build. Ask for the launch date in writing and treat it as part of the price.
What you are paying for in a website estimate#
Strip an estimate down and there are only five things in it, in the order that they cost money:
- Words. Someone has to write your services page, your about page and your page titles. This is the most expensive part and the part most often handed back to you.
- Design. Layout, colors, type. Custom design is expensive. A well chosen template isn’t, and on a five page site nobody can tell.
- Build. Turning the design into pages that work on a phone. Fast, if the design was sensible.
- Setup. Domain, DNS, mailbox, SSL, analytics, forms, sitemap. Fiddly, unglamorous, and the part that goes wrong.
- Aftercare. Updates, backups, and a person who replies when the form stops emailing you. This is what the monthly fee is for.
When two estimates are $2,000 apart, it’s almost always item one and item five. Ask directly: are you writing the copy, and what happens in month fourteen when something breaks.
What the DIY builders cost once you add everything#
The advertised price is almost never the price you pay in month thirteen. Every figure below was read on September 3, 2026 from the vendor’s own pricing page.
| Builder | Entry plan, billed monthly | The catch in the small print |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress, hosted | $9 a month | $4 a month on annual, then renews at $5 |
| Squarespace Basic | $21 a month | $16 a month only if you pay a year up front |
| Webflow Basic | $25 a month | No domain included at all |
| Wix Light | Not published | Yearly paid in full is the only price shown |
| IONOS Starter | $6 a month | Then $14 a month, on a one year minimum term |
| Hostinger Premium | $11.99 a month | $3.99 a month for twelve prepaid, renews at $10.99 |
Two of those are worth staring at. IONOS advertises $6 and charges $14 from month thirteen, with a year’s commitment either way. Hostinger’s headline $3.99 is a twelve month prepayment of $47.88, and it renews at $10.99. Neither is a trick, and both are ordinary in the trade. They just aren’t the price you were quoted.
Budget $15 to $35 a month for a DIY builder configured for a real business, plus your own time. Your time is the hidden cost. Two evenings a week for a month is roughly forty hours. At any sensible value for an hour of your work, that’s the most expensive part of the whole exercise.
The other DIY cost shows up in year two, when the site still has placeholder text on the about page and a stock photo of a beach on the services page, because the person who was going to finish it was you and you have been busy running a business. Half the sites we’re asked to rebuild are unfinished DIY builds, not bad ones. The tools are fine. What fails is the plan for a full time owner to also be a part time web designer.
The running costs nobody puts in the estimate#
- Domain: Hostinger listed .com renewing at $19.99 a year and IONOS listed .com at $20 a year, both on September 3, 2026. More on what a domain costs and who should own it.
- Hosting: $5 to $15 a month for shared hosting that’s fast enough.
- Mailbox on your own domain: $6 to $12 a month per address, bought separately.
- SSL certificate: often free now, still charged for by some hosts at $50 a year.
- Backups: $3 to $10 a month, and worth every cent the one time you need them.
- Theme or page builder license: $50 to $150 a year, renewing on a card you forgot about.
There’s a trap inside the domain line that most comparison articles miss. A domain described as included is almost always included for the first year only, and only on a plan billed annually. Wix says in writing that the voucher applies to yearly plans, must be redeemed within sixty days, and can’t be used on renewals. Squarespace says the offer applies to annual billing and to new domain purchases only. Hostinger’s free domain appears on twelve, twenty-four and forty-eight month terms and is absent from the one month plan entirely. B12 footnotes it as first year only. Webflow doesn’t offer one at all. Read the asterisk, then find the renewal price, because that’s the number you pay in every year after the first.
That list is why we bundle. On our hosting one mailbox, the SSL and nightly backups sit inside one monthly payment instead of arriving from four companies on four dates. The .com is included on the Complete plan at $18.99 a month. On Basic at $8.99 a month the name is registered in your own name and run for you, and the registry’s own annual fee for it, about $12 a year, is billed separately at cost. There’s no contract, so if it stops being worth it you stop paying.
Three estimates for a Richmond salon, side by side#
A two chair salon in Richmond needed a site with prices, opening hours and online booking. Two estimates came back for it, and here they are against our own.
| Route | Up front | Ongoing | Who writes the words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency estimate, March 2026 | $6,800 | $95 a month | Them |
| Freelancer plus separate hosting | $2,400 | $38 a month across four bills | Her |
| DEVIQO | $1 | Hosting, billed monthly | Us |
The middle column is the one owners read too quickly. The freelancer route was assembled from four suppliers: the registrar, the host, the mailbox provider and the page builder, each renewing on a date of its own against a card that expires eventually. One supplier or four is a real difference in how much of your attention a website takes, and it never appears on an estimate.
The agency site would have been handsome. It wouldn’t have taken more bookings than the one she has, because bookings come from the booking button being obvious, not from the shade of green behind it. She started in March, was live on March 19, and took her first online booking on March 22.
What makes an estimate go up, and when that’s fair#
Some things cost more and you should expect to pay. An online store with stock, shipping rules and a payment processor is more work than five pages, and that’s a different service. Multiple languages. A booking system that has to talk to something you already use. Migrating two hundred old pages and keeping their addresses so you don’t lose your rankings.
What isn’t worth paying more for: an extra round of color choices, a custom icon set, a slider on the homepage, an animated logo, or the word "custom" attached to a layout you have seen elsewhere. If you already have a site and are being quoted a rebuild, read what a redesign should fix first, because half of redesign budgets are spent on things no customer notices.
How to read an estimate before you sign it#
Five questions, in writing, before any money moves:
- Is sales tax added, and at what rate?
- Who owns the domain, and is it registered in my business name?
- Is the copy written by you, or am I sending you the text?
- What is the monthly cost after launch, all in, from every supplier?
- If I leave in a year, do I take the site with me, and how?
That last one catches people. Plenty of cheap monthly sites are rentals: stop paying and the pages vanish. Two of the vendors we looked at won’t answer the first question at all, because Hibu and RedefineWeb publish no prices anywhere on their sites. Ours isn’t a contract, you can stop any month, and the domain is yours. If you want a look at what the dollar buys, that’s the websites page. $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting today, then $8.99 a month until you cancel. Domain included on Complete, $18.99 a month. On Basic it’s billed at cost, about $12 a year.
Questions people ask about this
How much does a website cost for a small business?
A five page brochure site from a freelancer is usually $1,000 to $5,000, and from a small agency $5,000 to $15,000. Website Builder Expert put the freelance designer band at $1,000 to $5,000 upfront in its December 2025 update, and Elementor put agency work at $10,000 to $35,000. On a managed service like ours the price is different in shape rather than in size: $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting today, then $8.99 a month until you cancel. The wide gap is mostly about who writes the words and who is responsible when something breaks.
Is sales tax added to website quotes?
It depends where you are and who you are buying from. Several states tax web design or web hosting as a service, several don’t, and an out-of-state supplier may or may not have to collect. A $3,000 estimate can arrive as $3,000 or as $3,200 and neither is a trick. Ask whether the number you were given is the number on the invoice, in writing, before you compare two of them.
What are the ongoing costs of a website?
At minimum a domain and hosting. Hostinger listed a .com renewing at $19.99 a year and IONOS listed .com at $20 a year, both read on September 3, 2026, and shared hosting is commonly $5 to $15 a month. On top of that people pay for a mailbox, an SSL certificate, backups and a page builder subscription, which is how a cheap site ends up at $45 a month across four invoices. Bundled hosting like ours puts the mailbox, SSL and backups inside one bill. The .com is included on the Complete plan at $18.99 a month. On Basic at $8.99 a month the name is registered in your own name and run for you, and the registry’s own annual fee for it, about $12 a year, is billed separately at cost.
Why do web designers quote such different prices for the same job?
Because they aren’t quoting the same job. One price is a template with your logo dropped in. Another includes a copywriter writing your service pages, a photographer, and someone answering the phone in eighteen months when your contact form stops sending. Ask each estimate what happens after launch and the numbers start to make sense.
While you are here
Reading about it is the slow way.
We design the website, write the words and put it online in seven days. Today you pay $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting. After that hosting is $8.99 a month, billed on the same date each month until you cancel, and you can cancel in any month. The same build is openly sold at $1,500, which is what a US agency charges for a small business site of this size. The hosting carries a mailbox, SSL, and the DNS and renewals on your own domain. Domain included on Complete, $18.99 a month. On Basic it’s billed at cost, about $12 a year. No contract and no notice period.